To make one, you would stick the original cassette with the song you wanted into one side of the stereo & a blank one into the other & press the “play” & “record” buttons simultaneously. That song from the original would then be recorded on the blank as it played. Three, four, five minutes would pass. You would hit the “pause” button exactly when the song ended, change the original cassette, repeat twenty times over, & out of the hundreds of rewinds & tape hisses would emerge a cobbled-together tapestry of songs.

This is why mixtapes are such a labour of love – because they had to be made in real time. It’s hard to imagine an age where one was unable to assemble a playlist in a matter of seconds like how you would on Spotify but yes, there was. Before iTunes & digital streaming, it wasn’t uncommon to spend hours ruminating on the perfect sequence of songs and compiling them for a certain mood, a certain season, a certain someone. Why do you think there have been so many movies made & books written about mixtapes? They are soundtracks to the beat of love unraveling, stitched together by fictional characters.

Adventureland – Greg Mottola’s retro, ’80s inspired indie features Jesse Eisenberg as James & Kirsten Stewart as Emily. It tells their unlikely love story that unfolds over a summer spent working at Adventureland, a run-down theme park. In characteristic Eisenberg-esque style, James makes Em a mixtape called “J’s Favourite Bummer Songs” & they kiss in the car while it plays.

In the film High Fidelity, the main character Rob (played by John Cusack) summed up my feelings about a good mixtape when he said this: The making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all, you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.

Rob was right – it is a delicate thing, especially when they’re made as gifts. The best mixtapes were the ones embedded with coded messages, not unlike song titles. A good mix didn’t just say: Here, This is For You, but also Hey, I Love You, or This Is Who I Really Am, or This Was How I Felt That One Hot Summer Night When I Was Thinking of You but You Didn’t Have a Clue.

Perks of Being A Wallflower – Charlie’s mixtape, with The Smiths’ “Asleep” put in twice for good measure

The word “mixtape” was foreign to me for a long time because I was born in a time of discmans & their accompanying CDs – yes, those long-gone, shiny circles of music. When I was eight or nine, the first iPod had not been invented yet & I spent most of my school allowances at HMV, picking up whatever looked interesting & rushing home to stick it into my CD player & listen to the delicious morsels of music under the sheets (as detailed in this long spiel about my love for Fleet Foxes).

The first time I ever heard the word “mixtape” was when I was at a sleepover with my friend Liz (who loved The Dresden Dolls & The Academy Is & who was always introducing me to interesting music) & we were falling asleep in the attic after a night of eating too much pizza & watching bad chick flicks. After hours of dancing to Cobra Starship (!), we finally collapsed, exhausted, our bodies splayed out on the floor. She put on this CD at a low volume & this amazing, piano-driven rock started to play, & as we drifted to sleep, I asked her what it was & she whispered drowsily, The Mixed Tape…

Where are you now?As I rearrange the songs againThis mix could burn a hole in anyoneBut it was you I was thinking of

Since hearing that line in Jack’s Mannequin’s record Everything in Transit, I don’t think I’ve stopped making mixtapes, whatever form they may take. When I was thirteen & broke during Christmas, I bought blank CDs by the dozen & make a “mixtape” for each of my friends. I’m sure most of them went unlistened to, but I loved making them all the same, loved the gentle whirring of the disc in my dad’s laptop, designing album covers with magic markers while I waited for it to burn, the click of the CD tray as it delivered its gift to me twenty minutes later, warm & complete.

Where are you now?
As I’m swimming through the stereo
I’m writing you a symphony of soundAs I’m cutting through you track by trackI swear to God this mix could sink the sunBut it was you I was thinking of

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist – Post-breakup, heartbroken Nick makes many mixtapes for his horrible ex-girlfriend Tris, including this one devastatingly entitled “Road to Closure”. Unimpressed, Tris tosses them into the trash each time, only to be salvaged moments later by her friend Norah, who as it turns out, is the real deal.

When I was eighteen, a good friend moved to Australia for college. We had grown up together & shared common tastes in television shows & music & when she told me she was really leaving, I was happy for her but also quite morose. I was in that stage in my life where all my friends were making major life decisions, some of which scattered them across continents. Anyway, in December that year, she called to wish me happy birthday & we ended up speaking for a bit. I had missed her terribly & knew she had missed me too.

Finally, as we reluctantly said goodbye over the static of international airwaves, I thought I heard her say “I made a mistake!” before the line went dead & for the rest of the week, I wondered what mistake she had made… Was it her decision to leave Singapore? Did she want to come back? It wasn’t until I received a square package postmarked Australia a few days later that I realised that what she had really meant to say was this: I made a mixtape (for you).

“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

& then finally, there was that time when I took a music composition module in university which turned out to be an “experimental” soundscaping class. The professor was a hippie who wore long, white linen shirts and whose eyes lit up when he talked about John Cage or Steve Reich. He was also a terrible teacher & had the tendency to drone on or get lost in the middle of his sentence, never to find his way back again. It’s a true miracle I managed to pass the class since I was asleep most of the time.

Once though, he told us about how composers would create “incredible masterpieces” by locating sounds they liked in certain tapes & painstakingly splicing the portions by hand – literally cutting & pasting sounds together to create an auditory landscape. This avant-garde work had to be precise & sometimes took months, all to create pieces of “music” that sounded like noise to me. In that moment, I remember feeling crestfallen because it seemed like those new pieces, like the hundreds of mixtapes I had made over the years, were not new per se & were just combinations of things that already existed. You’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing…

The question of whether I would ever create something original haunted me all the way till I started to write in earnest. All the same, many poems & songs later, I arrived at the inevitable conclusion that everyone comes to when they set out to create something original – that we can’t, not really. But it’s quite alright, isn’t it? Artistic expression is but a combination of observation & imitation & influence. & we too, are undeniably made out of a thousand, indelible impressions from our pasts, & music is just a tiny slice of this inconceivable miracle that defines our humanity.

& where are you now?
& this is my mixed tape for her
It’s like I wrote every note
With my own fingers

Console yourself with this, dear reader: that we are more than the sum of our parts.

Even as I make playlists on Spotify today, some of them two hundred songs long, I try to think of what it was like for the original makers of mixtapes, how slow & torturous, but also how rewarding it must have been to find oneself in the immersive process. Sometimes the magic of music is lost on us because it has become so easy. But I won’t forget – no, I won’t.

Ever since I heard the howling wind I didn’t need to go where a bible went But then you know your gifts seemed heaven-sent Just lead me to a choler, dad, that’s the thing
I don’t know how you house the sin (But you’re free now) I was never sure how much of you I could let in (Am I free now) Won’t you settle down baby hereyour love has been Heavenly father has brought you a lover Why you don’t carry other names?Heavenly father is whose brought to His autumn & love is left in end…

When I finally hit rock-bottom late last year, I finally understood what my mom meant when she said: Don’t cry, you’ll make yourself sick. She used to say it when I was a child, whenever I was particularly upset about something, like a feud among childhood friends or a failed final paper. After everything finally imploded, I promptly developed a 39-degree fever & my whole face hurt from the non-stop crying. I stayed in bed for days: miserable, unconsolable, shame-stricken, guilt-ridden. & then I heard this song.

Maybe it was that unexpected scream that Justin Vernon let out right in the middle of the song. Maybe it was that line & the flighty harmonies that came with it: “I don’t know how you house the sin (but you’re free now)“. Maybe it was the 12 years in Catholic school & how the stately nominal “Heavenly Father” – so foreign to me lately – hit somewhere raw & latent underneath, the reverence & awe of it all… but anyway, something made me seize up, stop, listen. What a grotesque, utter cry of defeat. It was as if someone had knocked the wind right out of my chest & I clicked the replay button again & again, let the emotion brought out by this 4-minute song wash over me as I curled up in bed & squeezed my eyes shut.

& so I found myself at the same place that Justin Vernon was at a few years ago after the groundbreaking success of For Emma, Forever Ago & Bon Iver, Bon Iver – at the end of himself.

“This spectacular upheaval of life after these albums provoked an inner storm, a mental sickness of anxiety for Justin. Of course it did. The dream had taken on its own life. It all came to a head on an empty Atlantic beach. I bore witness to my best friend crying in my arms, lost in a world of confusion & removal. Justin could barely talk… The forecast that begins this next Bon Iver undertaking is a reminder of our fragile existence. How when everything appears stable, it may crumble & fall through our fingers. How do we hold on to what is important? How do we make sense of the events that rip us apart? What choices do we have & how do we make them? It was the beginning of an unwinding of an immense knot inside… & the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding.”

(Trevor Hagen, close friend of Justin Vernon)

I recognise that process because it is mine as well. Almost always, it starts with the beginning of the end, where one has gone through an emotional whirlwind & is in thrall to a very human sentiment: I’m done. Completely wrecked, bruised, ruined. & yes, it feels like you’ll never muster the strength to crawl out of the pit, but hey, can I let you in on something? & I only say this after complete annihilation of self & spirit – This too shall pass. Take comfort in the fact that the feeling slowly but surely fades & when it is over, there is a sure arrival to the most quintessential question: Now what?

& before you know it, there it is – & I am beginning to taste the reality of it, finally, a few months into the new year – a soft, glowing hope of what’s to come. Goodness. Restoration. Peace. It is what the darkness promises – a safety in the light in the end.

“This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realisation It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away Your love will be Safe with me”